As you read this, thousands of 18-34 year old men are watching Tampax commercials. Not because they want to, but because television is an imprecise medium that makes it hard to get the right ads to the right people. As a result, we’ve been conditioned over decades to expect irrelevance at the commercial break.
But wasn’t the Internet, and in particular, social media, supposed to turn that tide? Take Facebook—they know more about my day-to-day life than my parents do, and surely enough to serve me ads that I’d find remotely useful. But they’re dropping the ball. Big time.
Check out this little gem, currently smack dab in the middle of my news feed: an ad for MarineCFO. From their website: (Yeah, I clicked) “MarineCFO is the leading provider of on-vessel, marine operations, personnel, fleet maintenance and financial management solutions to the marine transportation industry.”
Will someone out there besides Google please get their shit together?
Update: Robert over at GrokDotCom picked this up, and some of the comments over there got me thinking. The bottom line is this: While a poorly-targeted TV ad reflects badly on the advertiser (and not the network), a poorly-targeted Facebook ad reflects badly on the network (and not the advertiser). The reason is that Facebook integrates advertising WITHIN their programming (my news feed) while the TV network traditionally keeps it separate (product placement aside).
In this sense, Facebook has a much greater responsibility than TV networks to make their ads relevant. When they don’t (as in the above example) they compromise their product experience, and damage their brand, all in exchange for a few pennies per CPM.
Because having your own blog means the right to posting videos exactly like this: the Spanish version of “Goin’ Crazy” from David Lee Roth’s 1986 album, Sonrisa Salvaje. Watch it for the outfit, if nothing else.
Before the cell phone merged with the PDA and the “mobile web” meant much of anything, there was Modo: the first wireless lifestyle device. Released in September 2000 by a SF-based startup called Scout Electromedia, Modo was the anti-Palm Pilot: a clever, irreverent city guide aimed at the 18-34 year old set. Each night, as if by magic, it would download a new batch of content through Motorola’s pager network.
Unlike Vindigo, which was designed to help you find specific information about stuff you knew existed, Modo delivered timely, insider tips on the things you wished you knew about, like restaurant and gallery openings, indie concerts and hipster loft parties. What’s more, Modo was actually an entertaining, unpretentious read. Each “post” was by-lined by a real person with a distinct angle. And though the technology limited their work to a few paragraphs each day, it also kept it tight and relevant—leaving you hungry for the next installment. Kind of like the way a blog should be.
But it was Modo’s design that really set it apart. Though the iPhone is sleek, elegant and precise, Modo was in some ways more revolutionary: Shaped like an upside-down teardrop and coated in soft, colorful rubber, holding it felt truly organic, which is not a word I’m accustomed to using to describe technology.
Sold mostly in clothing stores and boutiques, Modo cost $95 dollars and there was no service fee. A casualty of the dot-com bust, Scout barely extended the service to SF and LA before their financial backers pulled the rug out from under them. I owned a Modo for approximately a month before it became an incredibly attractive paperweight, and luckily, I still have it today.
In a previous post, I dissed the standard Apple earphones in favor of the Etymotic ER-6is, which (to recap) sound awesome, but have a flimsy, too-long cord that dangles to my knees. In fact, I wrapped them around my iPod so many times that the cord broke and I had to send it back to get it fixed. After that, I decided to forget the problem for a few months because they sound so damn good.
Then I got an iPhone.
As I quickly learned, my ER’s didn’t fit into its recessed headphone jack, so for a while I was back to using the shitty Apple-issued cans. In fairness, Apple did get a few things right: the cord is nice and durable, it’s the perfect length, and it even has a tiny microphone so you can break from your music to answer a call. Still, isn’t the most important thing about a set of earphones the way they sound? At that point, I evaluated my options:
Buy an adapter that would make the cord even more unwieldy.
Purchase a new set of iPhone-ready buds, like these. (Nuh-uh)
The great thing about the Internet is that if you have a problem, chances are somebody with more knowledge and more time is out there having it too. It was then I stumbled on Ultimate Buds, a Tennessee-based company that specializes in iPhone earphone mashups (say that 10 times fast). Send them your ER-6is, your Apple earphones and $40, and in a few days, they’ll send you back a pair of franken-buds: the no-compromise alternative for people exactly as anal as myself. Viva la long tail.
